Re: Really?
'Also it defined our local Scout district website as "gambling"'
They must have confused gambling with gambolling.
442 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Nov 2011
"* We would have loved to honour HTML syntax and surround the word "blink" with angle brackets, but doing so risked making the story unreadable in some browsers or causing El Reg's publishing apps to choke on tag we don't use."
Er, have you heard of < and > ? Or do I have to type &lt; and &gt;?
"One alternative would be to split the network off BT, Virgin et al and have a single government owned network. No digging the same road up three times to supply different suppliers. Only QOS as a benchmark. Guaranteed to work. Like the railways, or the roads."
Yes, we need a publicly owned infrastructure provider like Network Rail, not like Railtrack. This could be BT Wholesale/Openreach. The service providers could then compete on a level playing field. Private monopolies are always in it for what they can grab for their shareholders.
If we still had the GPO they would just do it because they were being paid to do it, not because they expected to make a profit. They might use far more people than were really needed (like British Rail) but they would get there in the end.
Apart from "there's no such thing", the safest OS is one that
a) is scarce enough that it isn't worth while anyone bothering to attack it;
b) is owned by someone who isn't important/rich enough to attack regardless;
c) lets you know exactly what it's running;
d) has an email client that displays messages in plain text and shows links clearly;
e) has a web browser that displays link URLs clearly and doesn't run any active code;
f) doesn't allow automatic remote installation or updating of software;
and probably a few other things I haven't thought of.
Of course it won't achieve anything. It's not meant to. It's politics. It's "something must be done". It's meant to give the impression that the government is doing something and not sitting on its hands.
Of course the real effect will be to get paedophiles clamouring to join IWF!
So let me get this right. If GCHQ want's to know the content of emails about people living in the United Kingdom it just has to say "Please Minister can we have authority to know the content of emails abut people living in the United Kingdom" and the minister says "Yes, of course you can have authority to know the content of emails about people living in the UK," and that's it. Note "about" and not "of", "to" or "from".
I have a dumb Sony HDD/DVD recorder that's just as bad. Also you have to push the TV/DVD button before sound comes out of the audio outputs, although there is a picture of sorts (jerky) on the HDMI output and some feint breakthrough of the sound straight away. Changing channels can take several seconds. It won't accept any commands while it's starting up. Sorry Sony, never again!
I mean it'll be more fun getting around the filters than seeing what you find at the end. And of course it will give naïve parents a false sense of security.
As for opt-in or opt-out, does it really make any difference? Just tell the ISP whether you want parental controls or not.
Well no, the record industry went down the pan because it buried its head in the sand for too long. Sorry about the mixed metaphor. Actually online shopping is shifting jobs from town centre shops to warehousing and distribution, which is actually a much more efficient use of resources. It also replaces one-person-one-car-one item journeys with planned delivery rounds which must reduce carbon emissions.
VAT will still be payable for UK-based on-line retailers, and import duty except for small items (which loophole could be stopped). They can only offshore their profits to avoid tax, and of course local/commercial taxes will be lower for out-of-town warehouses.
Well at least it does work with some browsers over 10 years old. It's not difficult to design a web site which will work with any browser, though maybe Mosaic that doesn't even support tables would make things a bit difficult. For that matter does it do forms?
Anyway I'd rather have a straightforward web site that works with any browser and platform (and isn't specially tailored to IE6 on Win95) than one stuffed with vast amounts of javascript, css and other unnecessary bloat.
"I use Yahoo Groups. The interface sucks and sadly, nobody has worked on it in ages."
That's why it's stable. They don't keep tampering with it every few weeks like farcebook. I'm on a number of groups and they work well as mailing lists. I don't use the web site much except to look for archived posts.
I use Streetmap because Google maps has serious browser compatibility issues. It's unusable on this platform. Unfortunately SM haven't done themselves any favours by adopting some awful mapping from one supplier at the street level. When they used Bartholomews it was very good. Now we have lots of missing names and junctions which aren't junctions or have no vehicular access.
I use PlusNet and have had reasonably good service. There are the occasional DNS issues but it's good value. I happen to have an Orange PAYG SIM for my dumb mobile, which is OK if you don't need their customer services and you can put up with stupid texts about magic numbers or dolphin something-or-other which I delete straight away. You can't even reply STOP to them.
"The ISP provoked a barrage of gripes from bellyaching customers when it yanked its free broadband service away from punters who refused to pay line rental to the company."
They've probably done the punters a favour. Why can't they just market it as a broadband plus telephony service?
"To put it bluntly: young people can see right through this crap and they are functionally immune to things like product placement, jiggling imagery, spamvertising, cold calling and high-pressure sales. Not only have two whole generations been inoculated against this crap, using these techniques actively triggers enmity among today's discerning technologists."
Exactly, but it doesn't only apply to young people. I'm a fully paid-up baby boomer and feel exactly the same way.
Give me the information I need. Cut the crap!
"I agree that money doesn't necessarily buy the best, but the truth is unless they replace US actors with British replacmenents (complete with fake accents to make them acceptable over here.. weird but true)"
Now there's a challenge for technology - automatically convert US accents to corresponding English accents and vice-versa (plus Scottish <> Canadian, Welsh <> Mexican etc.)
"... about how they continue to fund these multi-billion-dollar global content initiatives at the same time as satisfying the needs of people who aren't prepared to really pay for them,"
I for one would be very happy if they didn't make these multi-billion-dollar movies at all. If people aren't prepared to pay for them then they shouldn't get them. It's called supply and demand.
Anyway just because a product appears in a film or tv show, why should that fact make me want to buy it. So what if James Bond drinks Heineken instead of Vodka-Martini? I still prefer Rebellion IPA or Black Sheep or Exmoor Gold ...
I mean the BBC should be funded out of general taxation, based on the agreed fee per household. That would get rid of all the costs associated with collecting, administering and enforcing the current licence. British tax payers could then watch tv wherever they are. You would only need to make special arrangements for overseas visitors e.g. a tourist tax.
Yes there are lots of distractions but some are easily avoidable. I know very well that if I'm listening to a radio programme and typing a reply to El Reg at the same time I won't remember what was on the radio. The same applies to having a phone conversation or texting whilst driving: you're thinking about what you're saying or typing whilst driving on autopilot. It's not just a visual distraction - it uses a lot of your mental capacity so less is available for driving. And it's not just plain reaction time that suffers. You end up gazing straight ahead and not glancing sideways or using your mirrors, observation suffers and you don't perceive hazards until too late.
Business conversations are likely to be far more distracting than a simple "I'm stuck in a traffic jam". In fact I think the law goes too far with handhelds. It should be OK if you're stopped with the handbrake on and the gearbox in neutral or park. As it is you must remove the ignition key before using the phone.
"Yurop has gone into retardation level territory due to rampant voter whoring and pressure to bring in the dough, with limits that now just trigger false positives on alcometers. Lose your license, no problem."
Faulty logic. Driving ban = not driving = not buying fuel = not paying fuel duty = loss of dough to guvmint.
I've been with PlusNet for a long time and their spam filtering is pretty good. I also have my own rules-based and Bayesian filters. It's not a big problem. But you can usually change your username without ditching your ISP. The latter could be inconvenient if you're running a web site inside the ISP's domain.
"Most of the sites identified are those about which the RIAA itself has sent at least 100,000 notices of infringement to Google."
Surely sending 100,000 notices would have got them dumped as spam if not a DDoS attempt?
And I wonder if RIAA used Google to search for infringing sites, which could have promoted those sites.